Comment by izacus

(Repeating for umpteenth time:) I wish patent fees were exponential. Pay $10 the first year, $40 the second year, $160 the third year,.. $10,485,760 the tenth year, etc. The patent expires and goes to public domain the first year when the fee has not been not paid.

This way there'd be enough time to commercialize an invention for basically peanuts, so the small guy won't be dissuaded from doing so. OTOH holding on a patent for a very long time would only be possible if it brings gobs of money, end even so, only for a reasonably limited time, because on 15th year the fee would be $10,737,418,240.

I feel like patents are nowadays only used for things that would be easy to reverse-engineer or must be made public anyway. You can't recreate any modern technology by looking at patents, from semiconductor manufacturing to food processing.

So if patents have lost their original purpose, I don't see any value left in perpetuating the system.

I think relying on trade secrets for many things would actually be an improvement over what we have now.

You could still keep your recipe secret, but someone else could come up with something similar with no risk.

“ In fact it's questionable how much value society gets out of large corporation patents”

I think it’s overwhelmingly negative. They are killing innovation by small players and don’t produce much innovation compared to their size.

Was really so (specifically “lethal”? Do you have sources?

I know trade secret was much more important. Also the spirit of patents is to allow development by making all public.

But do they?! I’m tired of trying to extract useful information off patents, they are empty of content and full of BS is laywer language. Real important details are kept secret, as long as possible.

The current system is de facto not working properly. I’m not saying is the worst, or I have better ideas, but is clear that the system is being heavily abused in all corners.

> it's questionable how much value society gets out of large corporations

ftfy

It ain't just patents

I mean, with limiting the allowed use of force to guard secrets, we are probably nowhere near as at risk for the worst of the past? As you said, the competition to guard secrets could be quite severe, and they were not exactly good at knowing actual leaks of their secrets versus someone else independently arriving at them.

That is, I think having the assumption of independent discovery would go a long way to preventing abuse.

I could see some hazard that small shops can't protect their secrets from partner manufacturers and such. But that is exactly where we are with a lot of stuff today?

>It's telling that before the Patent system the solution was secretive guilds that jealously (sometimes lethally) guarded their secrets to avoid competition. This was obviously terrible since it greatly slowed down innovation.

Nowadays HFT technology is extremely competitive, with firms investing tens of millions in custom harder to achieve nanosecond latency improvements, but all this has happened entirely without patents. As an industry HFT is way less monopolised than tech, suggesting trade secrets alone are enough to achieve growth and competition.